At the Border
by lunchinanelevator
Summary: Kalinda and Sophia before, during, and after. Reviews are my favorite kind of views.
1. Chapter 1

**1.**

When Sophia walks back in, Kalinda Sharma is standing by her desk, examining the framed photographs and unobtrusively edging a manila folder open. The heels of her boots are about four inches high, and Sophia notices for the first time that she's actually a very tiny woman, the curves of her hips so fine it's as if they were inked.

"Nice try," Sophia breathes close to her ear.

Kalinda turns, as if she knew all along that Sophia was behind her. "I got what I needed." Her smile is thin and playful. Sophia lets a thin sigh of frustration escape her own lips.

"What did you need?"

Kalinda shrugs. Sophia does a quick inventory of the papers left on her desk before she went to the restroom. Nothing she needs to worry about. Sophia's pretty sure she can stand up to any sabotage.

Kalinda cocks her head towards the three photographs lining the shelf above Sophia's desk. "Hmm?"

"My nieces. My husband. My brother," Sophia says, pointing to each.

"Where are they?"

"In the pictures? Or now?"

"Whatever."

"Why do you want to know?"

Kalinda purses her lips. "I believe it's known as 'collegiality.'"

Sophia has to laugh. She doesn't know Kalinda very well; she appeared on the staff suddenly less than a year ago (Florrick seems to like her, but it's the rare woman under the age of forty that Florrick doesn't like). Since it's the rare case that mandates two investigators, Kalinda and Sophia have mostly gone their separate ways. Sophia's hardly been close enough to her to admire the hourglass figure, the full, sweet lines of her lips—she shakes her head, trying to clear the lust that's already fogging it. Three months without sex is long enough for anyone.

"James and the girls are in Memphis."

"That where your family's from?"

Sophia ignores her. "Griffin's still working out of Seoul, he's at the North Korean border in that picture."

"Journalist?"

"Yes."

Kalinda leans on the edge of Sophia's desk and crosses one high-booted leg over the other. "Think you could do something for me?" she says.

"Why?"

"'Cause it's gonna help you too." Kalinda shrugs, her shoulders loose as liquid. "You can't tell me you haven't noticed."

Sophia won't be pulled into that. She crosses her arms beneath her breasts and waits.

It's a full two minutes before Kalinda cracks a smile. "Fine," she says. "There's someone in this office we ought to keep an eye on. I've got it down to two, but I could use a hand."

"Yeah?" Sophia cocks an eyebrow, a bit incredulous at this woman's cockiness. "What's in it for me?"

"Tell you when to abandon ship."

Sophia studies Kalinda. She raises her chin with arresting confidence, daring Sophia to challenge her knowledge. Florrick's been edgy lately, everyone has noticed that, and some clerk or other might have seen him with a blonde woman or maybe she was Latina but she was _definitely_ not his wife, but "abandoning ship" hadn't really crossed Sophia's mind.

Kalinda continues, in a voice that Sophia has to lean quite close to hear. "I'll know when it's coming. But I'll know even more if you can check out some things on Matan and Geneva for me."

"Do you think maybe there's someplace else we could discuss this?" Sophia says carefully.

"I usually get a drink after work," Kalinda murmurs. The breath near her ear makes Sophia shiver, and she hopes Kalinda hasn't noticed. They're looking out over the room now, staring at the door to Matan's miniscule office, at Geneva's empty desk—she's in court—and when Sophia turns back to Kalinda it's all she can do not to lick her lips. Kalinda smiles as if daring her to do so, then turns on her heel and twitches out of the room.

/

"Did you just _squeak_?" Sophia presses the length of her body against Kalinda.

Kalinda has been breathing deeply as she comes down from a fast and fierce orgasm, enjoying the softness of Sophia's hand on her waist and the tender memory of her tongue, but now her eyes fly open. "Excuse me?"

"You squeaked." Sophia's cat-that-ate-the-canary smile is wide and wet, and another rush of pleasure clenches Kalinda's core.

"I did no such thing." Kalinda smiles and nips Sophia's earlobe.

"I never knew you could make a noise like that." Sophia kisses a different spot on her throat to emphasize each word. "Kalinda … Sharma … squeaks." Kalinda rolls her eyes, but then Sophia rolls her still-tender clit between her thumb and forefinger, and this time Kalinda hears the noise as it bursts from her throat, and she can't deny it. Sophia laughs, latches her lips to Kalinda's breast with a murmured "told you so," and it can't be more than ten seconds of rough, playful handling before Kalinda comes again. Sophia's laugh is loose and sharp and shiny, and all in all it's a much more pleasant time than Kalinda has had in quite a while.

Later, Sophia's cheek lies against her collarbone, her breath rippling across Kalinda's chest, and it seems a shame to wake her. Kalinda grabs the remote and flicks the TV on to keep herself from getting up. A news segment about Florrick's rumored corruption is just ending, and Sophia murmurs, "What do you think?"

"Hmm?" If Kalinda had known she was awake, she would have stood up half an hour ago.

"Florrick. You think it was a hooker?"

"Oh, I know she was." There's no point in hiding it anymore; Florrick's finally waking up to the moves Glenn Childs is making, and it's only a matter of time before the rest of the office finds out. Kalinda knows, too, that when Florrick finally catches on to her involvement she'll be making tracks—she's been putting out feelers at a law firm or two—but a new ally never hurts, and a new ally who can do that kind of thing with her tongue hurts even less.

"You seem to know a lot," Sophia murmurs.

"Yeah." Kalinda would shrug, but Sophia's on her shoulder.

"You gonna tell me where you're getting this information?"

"Glenn Childs," Kalinda says. Sophia pushes up on her forearms to look at Kalinda's face. Kalinda keeps her expression neutral, and then Sophia lets loose another chuckle and presses her swollen lips to Kalinda's again.


	2. Chapter 2

**2.**

"I give you another week," Sophia says. "Tops."

"Yeah. Probably." Kalinda snorts, and Sophia likes it, the slightly repulsive sound in Kalinda's delicate face. She kisses her, and goddamn, the woman is delicious.

"You don't even care?"

"I'll be fine." Kalinda rolls on top of her and traces her collarbone with a finger, stopping occasionally to kiss spots she seems to have chosen at random. "You should worry about yourself, anyway. This new firm." She palms one of Sophia's breasts and gently tongues the other nipple, making Sophia sigh. "No one from his staff is getting out unscathed."

Sophia lets her eyes drift shut and her words fade for a few minutes, wriggling and whispering with pleasure as Kalinda slowly works her way down her torso. When she can't feel the other woman's lips anymore, she lifts her eyelids to find Kalinda gently resting her chin just above Sophia's pelvis, obviously expecting some kind of answer. "I'm not an ASA," Sophia says. "I won't get tarred with the same brush. It'll be fine."

Kalinda nods, thinking about this. "I just want—You shouldn't have to go down with him. You'll do good work. You deserve success."

It's the most affection she's ever heard from Kalinda, less the occasional endearment she chokes out right before she comes. Sophia smiles like she's won. "At least I'm leaving on my own terms."

Kalinda raises an eyebrow. "Who says these aren't my terms?"

"God, Kali. Who knows what your termmmmmmm …" The rest of Sophia's sentence is lost on a moan as Kalinda continues to kiss and lick and suckle her way down. Sophia tangles her hand in Kalinda's already-mussed updo, strands of hair silky around her fingers, but she feels too much pleasure to even know where to urge Kalinda's head. There is nothing, nothing, that this woman's mouth cannot do. Kalinda glances up and then goes back to lapping and suckling at her, even the brush of her hair across Sophia's inner thigh electric. Sophia whimpers, the rest of her body trembling as fiercely as her inner walls are. The two fingers Kalinda thrusts and curls into her are barely necessary to finish the job.

When Sophia opens her eyes, Kalinda has sidled up the mattress, leaning an elbow on the adjacent pillow. She licks her own fingers with a sly smile, and Sophia rolls onto her side so that Kalinda can spoon her.

Kalinda's tenderness after sex is one of the loveliest and most surprising facets of having her as a lover. She keeps a light arm wrapped around Sophia's waist and applies soft kiss after kiss to the back of her neck, the space between her shoulder blades, while her breathing calms and the delicious drunken sleepiness takes over. After the first couple of times Sophia was startled by the gestures, but they've started to seem almost natural, almost as if this were what Kalinda was really like. Sophia puts her own pale hand on Kalinda's and kisses the woman's knuckles.

"You know," says Sophia as if it's just occurred to her, as if it hasn't been on her mind since Kalinda told her the truth about Florrick, "you should come with me."

"Come with you …?"

"My new firm. It'd be nice to have someone I could trust, someone I wouldn't have to train."

"I don't think so," Kalinda says, so quickly that Sophia rolls out from under her embrace to look at her face. Kalinda's eyes are lowered.

"Why not?"

"Well. Can you see me going corporate?"

Sophia runs her eyes down Kalinda's beautiful body and grins. "I can see you all over."

Kalinda smiles back, but it looks distant. "Anyway, I got a job."

"You got a what?"

"Stern, Lockhart, and Gardner. I'll be their in-house." Kalinda rolls onto her back. "I start in three weeks. You know, give Florrick a little time for public shaming and then give myself a week off."

"Legal? It doesn't pay like this is gonna pay."

Kalinda shrugs, and Sophia is suddenly annoyed with her.

"You won't last long."

"I might."

"I give you six months. Then you'll figure out you can't cut the kind of corners you need to cut. You'll change your mind."

"I won't change my mind." Kalinda's gaze shifts away from Sophia's, her eyes tracing patterns on the walls.

"What's up?" Sophia asks.

"Nothing really," says Kalinda. "Just … I think I have to try monogamy for a little while."

Sophia snorts herself. "Good luck with that."

"Yeah, I know." Kalinda rolls her eyes halfheartedly. "But … she asked. I figure I should at least … you know."

"She?"

"Yeah." Kalinda says it lightly, as if she doesn't understand why Sophia's even asking, why it even matters.

Really, Sophia doesn't understand it herself. She certainly can't make any claim to monogamy. But she's never expected it of Kalinda—really, the idea's almost laughable. She can't imagine Kalinda with the sort of woman who would ask for commitment. Still, she's jolted. She expected her nights with Kalinda to see her through the dissolution of the State's Attorney's staff, to carry her through the founding of her own firm. Sophia certainly couldn't say why—really, it seems illogical—but Kalinda's presence makes things easier. "You couldn't have told me before?"

"Before what?"

"Before we got started."

Kalinda looks a little startled. "Ever?"

"Tonight."

"Yeah," Kalinda says. "I didn't want to. It's … Why waste our time?" Sophia can't think of anything to say, and it's strange, since Kalinda is obviously waiting for a response of some kind. When it's not forthcoming, she continues, "It's been fun."

And it has. Really, there's no excuse for Sophia's frustration now. Who could say she hasn't gotten everything she needed? She sits up, swings her legs off the side of the bed, reaches for the bra draped over the lampshade. But it's Kalinda's, not hers, and she sighs.

"Hey," Kalinda says softly, slipping up beside her, pressing her lips to Sophia's shoulder. "Come on."

"Come on what?" says Sophia stiffly.

Kalinda smiles, crooks an arm around her neck, kisses her once, twice, lets her other hand slide down her ass. "Come on, I still have another couple hours before I have to pick her up."

/

"You've got to be kidding me. His _wife_?"

Five months in, and Kalinda's surprised by how much she enjoys Stern Lockhart. It's a big, bustling firm, full of overeducated people overly worried about the economic downturn; nobody even notices Kalinda unless she wants them to. They look the other way when she cuts legal corners, and she's become, somehow, a confidante to the younger name partners. Jonas Stern isn't wild about her, but he's barely around and rarely gives his seal of approval to anybody. She's managing. She's more than managing.

"I didn't know she was even a lawyer."

She's managing with Donna, too, to her surprise. Work keeps them both busy, and Kalinda's managed to limit the inevitable dalliances to men at a decent distance from Donna's circles.

"Yeah. Apparently she had a thing with Will back in the day."

Now this sounds interesting. Kalinda pauses to consult her notes a reasonable distance from Fitzgerald and Ryan, two white third-year associates in their late twenties wearing identical suits, who are clustered by the coffeemaker.

"Really? I wouldn't think Will would go for …"

"Maybe she was different back then."

"I mean that kind of nepotism. It seems like he's … you know. He wouldn't risk the firm for that."

"Everybody has a weak spot."

Kalinda agrees.

"It's going to be weird." Fitzgerald stirs a third packet of Equal into his coffee. Kalinda leans up against the wall. "For the junior associate to be so much older."

"There's another one, too," Ryan says. "Some Harvard kid."

"Yeah. Agos. My sister knew him there."

"Like, _knew_ knew?"

Fitzgerald ignores him. "I kind of feel sorry for her, you know? I mean, no one's going to be able to talk about anything else when she's around. Her husband's in jail. And if she only got the job because Will—imagine what Diane's going to be like."

Kalinda manages to round the corner and slip into a ladies' room before she bursts into laughter. She tries to remember the woman's name—Julia, maybe. Alice. Peter Florrick's wife. It's as if the man is determined to follow her everywhere.


	3. Chapter 3

**3.**

Kalinda hovers in the middle of the room and watches Sophia go, hips and ass shifting beneath her cream-colored skirt. Once Sophia is safely out of sight, once Kalinda's reassured herself that everyone else in the building is watching the auction, she allows herself to sink into a chair near the window that looks as if it's covered in tapestry. Edward VI or who the hell knows.

She's tired, the kind of tired that uses sharp teeth to gnaw out hollows behind her eyes. The last few nights she's watched the digital clock flip numbers for as long as she can handle, then slipped out of bed and through her front door, walked several miles down Roosevelt, and wandered the lakefront path alone in the dark until the hurt subsided to a dull, distant ache. She's returned home at four or five in the morning and just managed to close her eyes before she has to face another day of watching Alicia, feeling the pulse of Alicia's hatred, the radiations of Alicia's pain as well as her own.

Kalinda has never hurt like this. Leela did, of course, but there's a reason she stopped being Leela. She knew from the minute the elevator doors shut that she had to get out of Lockhart/Gardner before it killed her, and she spent most of that afternoon in a bar (the bar where she and Alicia always had drinks, which was probably a bad idea, but it was near the office and Kalinda was having a hard time thinking of another one), considering her scant prospects for self-preservation.

Her first thought was the many job offers that Lana Delaney's tossed her way, but she dismissed it quickly—if Blake found out about Leela just by looking, she certainly didn't want to give the FBI an opening for a background check. Also, despite a sexual bluntness that borders on crude, Lana has an emotional acuity that Kalinda knows could trap her. Lana has seen Kalinda with Alicia before; she would put the pieces together in a way that Kalinda is just too beaten down to deflect, and she can't be any more indebted to Lana. She can't be any more indebted to anyone.

A woman—skinny, white, wearing a gray suit with a white cotton blouse, her gray-and-brown hair pulled into a bun—enters the room, black pumps pounding lightly on the carpet. She takes in the contrast between Kalinda and the furniture. "Can I help you?"

"No," Kalinda says. True enough. The woman waits for a minute or two, pressing her lips into a line, and finally turns on her heel.

Her second thought was going into business for herself. Sharma, LLC. She'd laughed in the bar, sending a small spurt of bourbon through her nose, but either no one had noticed or they wouldn't have expected anything else from someone on her second glass of bourbon at eleven in the morning. Sole proprietorship. Please. Kalinda now had abundant evidence that she destroys everything valuable she touches. She cannot afford to be the only thing on which her survival depends.

Now, as she hears the wealthy bidders trickle out of the auction room down the hall, Kalinda feels something small release behind her ribs. Sophia Russo was the right answer.

In fact, seeing Sophia was downright pleasant. Sophia remembers, and treats her as, a different Kalinda, a Kalinda for whom Peter was the only Florrick. She shudders a little as she remembers that—she's disgusted by Peter Florrick, what he's cost her, what she's lost—but at the same time, she remembers what it was like to have a modicum of power, not to be stripped bare every time she turned her head. She remembers the calm that would come over her as she assessed her next step, the confidence, borne out a dozen times, that she was walking on solid ground. That's who she is to Sophia.

She takes a minute to remember Sophia, Sophia's nails tracing lazy patterns on her shoulder blades in a manner that somehow awakened every nerve in Kalinda's groin, Sophia's lips against her thighs, the flesh of her stomach.

Working for Sophia, Kalinda thinks, will have fringe benefits.

From the corner of her eye, she spots the woman in the gray suit coming towards her with a broad-shouldered, buzz-cut man walking in lockstep. Kalinda sighs, breathes deeply, and rises with deliberation from the paisley-upholstered chair. As she joins the stream of bidders, she feels something like relief. Two more weeks. That's all. Then a port in the storm.


	4. Chapter 4

**4.**

Sophia readies for the date like it's their first, like the entire Florrick scandal didn't pass with Sophia's head in the curve of Kalinda's hipbone, both of them making convenient mockery of the term "bimbo eruption." She sweeps blush over her cheekbones, declines to wear a bra, runs a finger along the line of her V-neck and casts a quick eye over herself in the mirror as she leaves the house. It's not the greatest timing, tonight, but Griffin isn't due in from Philly until eleven and goddamnit, Sophia deserves a little fun.

"Fancy meeting you here," she murmurs to Kalinda, grazing a few fingertips over her shoulder as she slides onto the barstool beside her.

Kalinda smiles for a second or two. "Fancy." She's wearing dark purple and her skin glows in the golden light. Sophia sighs. She's already imagining Kalinda's lips latched to her throat, imagining licking the fine line of Kalinda's cheekbone. She sucks her breath in and wishes Griffin were in town more often. The sex deprivation really does a number on Sophia's head.

At Kalinda's silent gesture, the bartender delivers two glasses of something light and not visually identifiable. Kalinda lifts her glass and meets Sophia's eyes for a second. She looks a little run down. They toast and Sophia sips: tequila. She shudders a bit. Kalinda doesn't seem to notice.

"So nice digs at Lockhart/Gardner," says Sophia. "I can see why you didn't want to leave them."

Kalinda shrugs. "Yeah."

"You like Will Gardner? Word on the street is he's kinda shady."

Kalinda shrugs again, flashes that tiny smile again. "I like shady."

"Do you?"

"Yeah. Makes things easier, you know?"

Kalinda's looking into the mirror behind the bottles. "Long day?" Sophia asks."

"Many."

Kalinda finishes her tequila. Sophia chokes down another sip of her own and watches her. There's something a little scary here, like Kalinda could whip around and cut her throat at any minute as easily as kiss her. But it's been a long time, and maybe Kalinda was always like that. It adds another current to the air.

The bartender delivers another round, not noticing or not caring that Sophia's glass is practically untouched. Kalinda goes at hers like it's a shot. "Hey," Sophia says.

"Liquid courage," Kalinda says. Sophia doesn't really believe it; Kalinda's never needed that. But the edge in her voice precludes Sophia commenting any further, and they sit for a moment or two in a strange silence until Sophia thinks of another opening.

"And am I crazy?" Sophia asks. "Or was that Florrick's _wife_ whose office we were in?"

"Yeah."

"What's she doing? I didn't even know she was a lawyer."

Then Kalinda's hand is halfway up her thigh, Kalinda's wrist wrinkling the hem of her skirt. Sophia's not even sure how it got there, but Kalinda is not fooling around. She lets her hand creep up the inside of Sophia's thigh, runs a short, perfectly manicured fingernail along the edge of Sophia's panties, right there at the bar. Sophia swallows, trying not to gasp. There's a rush of moisture fierce enough that Kalinda looks up at her and licks lips formed into a tiny smile.

"How about we get out of here?" Kalinda whispers.

There's no way Sophia will just let Kalinda get away with this. She nods, slides a couple of twenties from her wallet with a trembling hand.

As soon as they're alone in the elevator, Sophia grabs Kalinda's shoulders, presses her back against the wall, and catches her lips in a kiss that heats the air around them. Kalinda responds with equal force, her tongue swirling with Sophia's, and it takes them a second to stop when the elevator door dings open. Kalinda slips out ahead of Sophia, but Sophia catches up to her by slipping her own hand up Kalinda's skirt. She knows she's playing with fire—who knows, Kalinda's employers could be on this floor, any of her own clients could appear at any moment—but when Kalinda casts a glance over her shoulder, the same light and sexy smile playing at her lips, Sophia's sure it's worth it.

She slides the key into the door, and barely has it open before Kalinda tumbles them both into the vestibule, kicks the door shut behind her, pushes Sophia to the wallpaper and presses the length of her body along Sophia's back, gripping her ass with one hand. "If that's how you want to play," Kalinda murmurs, nipping Sophia's neck, "that's how we'll play."

/

She can't even taste the fifth shot, and the bartender, just a little too much of a scruffy hipster for the classy veneer of this place, puts one wiry hand on top of hers and says, "I'm cutting you off."

Kalinda looks at him, or possibly a little to the left of him, and doesn't say anything. Everybody's cutting her off these days.

"Can I get you some water?"

Kalinda nods. Everything shakes. More than anything she'd like to march out while the bartender's back is turned, but her legs are not going to hold her up right now. He's not bad from the back, she thinks, although the lines of what is probably a firm ass in skinny jeans seem to be blurring.

Try as she might—and she has been trying since she escaped the hotel room—Kalinda cannot call this husband to mind. Griffin, at the North Korean border. She doesn't remember seeing any picture. She doesn't even remember how she met Sophia, not really. As far as Kalinda's concerned she was just always _there_, in Kalinda's phone, in her brain, in her bed, and she expected to keep her there, to have more of her. She expected Sophia as a refuge. She tries to fill in the blank of the husband's face, a face that would fall in devastation if it knew where Sophia's face had been a mere few hours ago. He'd be a dark-haired, strong, quiet type. He'd try to take it stoically when he found out, try to understand that this was just how Sophia dealt with his absence, try to mask the pain and isolation that came with his work and the months he spent missing his wife, thinking of her, giving all he had to loving her.

"Here." The bartender places a glass of water in front of Kalinda.

"Thanks." It's hard to get the word out, harder to take a sip.

"That's a lot of shots for someone as little as you," he says.

Kalinda raises an eyebrow. It's not quite as effective as it usually is—it's possible both of her eyebrows are going up at once, she's not really sure—but he still backs off.

Kalinda wonders how Peter Florrick would come home to Alicia after Amber Madison, wonders if Alicia could tell but was too afraid to speak, to put it together. The Alicia Kalinda knows now, Kalinda is pretty sure, is not afraid of anything, but she's not sure she could say the same of the woman on screen during the scandal, the pretty, dowdy wife in the ugly suit whose face was a mask of quiet control.

She chugs from her glass of water as if it were a shot, wishing it were a shot. Peter Florrick didn't stay the night with her. Afterwards, he went home to Alicia, to the housewife who was waiting. It was funny, then—everything about Peter Florrick was pretty funny. It was laughably easy to seduce him, to slink into his confidence, to track down his bimbo eruptions. It was easy, too easy, to distract him from his wife back when Alicia wasn't in the story.

And for weeks at a time, over the space of years, it's been easy with Sophia.

And fuck it, that was all Kalinda'd wanted.

"Hey," she says, drumming her fingers on the bar until the hipster finally turns. "Need to close out my tab." Talking is still difficult.

"It's about time," he answers. He casts through the last few cars that remain by the cash register, holding her Visa up for her approval. "Kalinda?" He runs his tongue over the consonants. She nods. "Pretty name."

"Yeah."

"Pretty lady."

"Shut up."

The last thing Kalinda wants to do is cry in front of this idiot, but the naked, stark pain on Alicia's face is in every corner of her head and Kalinda did that. She did that and she's lost her. And she's lost Sophia, lost her to the aura of damage that encases Kalinda's every move. She signs the receipt with a quick trembling hand and takes tiny rapid steps out of the bar, out of the hotel, along the curb where she will not kneel down, not bend over, no matter how sick she feels. The least she can do is make it home.


	5. Chapter 5

**5.**

Kalinda backs off as the cops arrive. Truth be told, it's shady for her to be talking to Sophia in this context in the first place; to be present for Tariq Husayni's actual arrest by actual cops would be idiotic. She beats a hasty retreat to the restroom, a little surprised that she's breathing so hard, that her heart is vibrating. She shuts herself in a stall for a moment or two, but when she emerges again, she still looks scared in the mirror.

She texts Alicia with a shaking hand: "Got him. It's all right." She owes Alicia that much. She owes Alicia much more than that. Even this case, she's just fucking things up for Alicia at every turn. Not fucking up is the point of being Kalinda Sharma. She can't keep doing this. She hates Alicia.

The hatred surges up and for a second Kalinda can feel it in her fingertips, bubbling in her stomach, twitching in her calves. She ducks back into the stall certain she's going to be ill and grateful no one else is present, but she just hovers, sick.

Her phone buzzes. "Thanks," says the text from Alicia.

Kalinda sighs.

If she were the sort of person who did this sort of thing, she might well curl up on the tile floor. Screwing up this case in the first place was trying—it's not the sort of thing she usually does, and she knows Diane is right, that even exchanging a few words with Alicia would have called Cary's smooth move into question, prevented the disaster that almost doomed Jamel—but it's worked her way under her skin, where it's uncomfortable, itching.

Something about him felt familiar. Even when she was pressing Tariq Husayni's jaw against a barstool, that feeling rippled through her, that it could well be her own cheek shaking beneath her fingers.

Normally Kalinda can get into people's heads and escape unscathed. That's what she's always done, what she assumed she'd always do. But lately it seems like cases have been sticking to her. She doesn't like it. Normally she pops into the trial, just for a second or two, when she knows her contribution mattered—it's just nice to see what she's accomplished—but she won't be getting anywhere near this one. She doesn't want to see Tariq again, doesn't have any interest in the bloody photographs of Simon Greenberg's corpse.

Well, she can't let it get to her. She leans back against the wall and takes a couple of deep breaths, preparing herself to rejoin the world of the living. The cops will still be there, and likely Cary as well—she doesn't want to see him now, she's still irritated by how well he outplayed her—but it's a gay bar that's been around since the seventies, the place must have a fire door, the kind that leads onto an alley. Should be easy enough.

The door to the restroom swings open as she's about to grab the handle. Sophia grins broadly. "I was wondering where you got off to," she says. "That was kinda fun, don't you think?"

"Yeah." Kalinda forces a little smile. She's getting worse and worse at that.

"Reminds me of the good old days."

Kalinda can't recall working on even one case with Sophia before that bloody glove appeared on Alicia's desk a few weeks before. "Which good old days?" she says.

Sophia kisses her, hard and slow. "Those," she says, cupping the back of Kalinda's head with her hand. The air around Kalinda starts to hum with electricity. She slips her hands around Sophia's hips and pulls them roughly against her own.

"Oh," she says, kissing Sophia again. "Yeah."

/

The adrenaline and attraction don't wear off for a while, but as Kalinda grinds hard on Sophia's fingers, Sophia starts to notice an odd expression on her face. Kalinda is biting her lip so hard it seems like she'll draw blood, there's a tear streaking from the corner of her eye, she's breathing through her nose erratically, and her moans sound like all pleasure has long since been excised. "Okay?" Sophia asks softly.

"What?" Kalinda gasps in a sharp voice. She looks like she's simultaneously seriously injured and somewhere else completely. Sophia watches, her rhythm beginning to slacken.

Kalinda squints her eyes open. With one hand she grabs Sophia's wrist and tries to drive Sophia's hand harder into her. "Yeah," she chokes. "Yeah."

In a fluid motion Sophia snatches her hand away, inadvertently waving it under the automatic towel dispenser. The noise makes them both jump. Kalinda's eyes open fully, and she pushes her skirt down with both hands and looks Sophia over.

"What?" she says.

"You know what," Sophia answers curtly. Whatever it is Kalinda's doing, she wants no part of it.

"Sophia," Kalinda says.

Sophia crosses her arms and meets her eyes. "Kali."

Kalinda swallows loudly enough that Sophia can hear it, and her eyes dart around the room. And then she wilts under Sophia's glare, glancing sideways over a shoulder that's begun to slump forward. For a few seconds her whole upper body quivers, not with tears but as if the tension it's held until now is just too great. Sophia notices for the first time in many years just how small she is—the tiled walls seem to stretch around her, as though her presence barely makes a mark.

It's not Sophia's picture of Kalinda, and it's not pretty. It makes her think she's forgotten Kalinda, or that she never knew her. Some part of her wants to comfort the woman, but anything that she might have to offer would be useless, and anyway Kalinda wouldn't want it.

She watches as Kalinda turns towards the mirror, places her hands on either side of the sink, stares for a second into the basin. Then with her left hand she reaches into her jacket pocket and removes a tube of lipstick, which she reapplies in a smooth coat. Sophia sighs. "Something wrong?" Kalinda asks.

"No. I'll see you later." Sophia turns on her heel, reaches for the restroom door. She'd say it was a miracle no one's interrupted them so far, but then she realizes they're in the women's restroom in a bar that teems with gay men.

"I thought it was what you wanted," Kalinda says.

Sophia stops, but doesn't feel like looking at her. "In a manner of speaking," she says carefully.

"Right."

"Don't bullshit me, Kali."

There's a pause while Kalinda seems to consider this. Sophia still doesn't want to see her face, but she's surprised when Kalinda answers, in a voice that sounds choked from here, "Yeah. All right."

"I'll see you," Sophia says.

"I look forward to it."

Sophia shuts the door, knowing she just bore witness to something she never should have seen. There's a little twist low in her belly, a pang of something, but she decides to ignore it, as she doesn't see what she would gain by giving it attention. It's been a long day and it's time to go home, even to an empty apartment. Next time, it has to be someone uncomplicated. She liked the way that Cary kid was looking at her. A Florrick in the making, but a little cleaner-cut, a little more careful. That sounds good to Sophia, comfortable and safe.


	6. Chapter 6

**6.**

"You doing okay?" Griffin asks. He's got a hand on her shoulder. Sophia pulls his arm around her neck and leans back into him.

"Yeah, just thinking," she answers.

"What's on your mind?" he asks. She doesn't respond. He strokes her hair. "I wish I didn't have to go too."

"You ever think about maybe, you know, getting married and settling down?" she says. He snorts and kisses her. She loves him, Sophia's whole body remembers. How much she loves him has very little to do with how much he's here and how much he's gone, with who or what she does when he isn't here. She's lucky to have Griffin any way she can have him. He deepens the kiss, its tenderness, its completeness.

A phone buzzes on the coffee table, and both of them turn around, startled. "Mine," Sophia says.

"Don't answer."

"You're telling me not to answer work? You, honey, can't tell me not to answer work." Sophia disentangles herself from her husband's arms and reaches towards the coffee table.

"Touché," Griffin sighs, stroking his hand down her spine.

"Sophia Russo."

"Got a minute?"

It's been a while since Sophia's heard the voice, and it takes her a minute. "Just a second," she mouths to Griffin, who shrugs his shoulders and nods, then ducks into the bedroom to finish packing. "Kalinda?" Sophia says. "What's going on?"

"Um. I could be in trouble," Kalinda says. She sounds preternaturally calm, the version of herself that Sophia remembers from years ago.

"What kind of trouble?"

There's a pause, and Sophia swears she can see Kalinda pursing her lips. "The kind of trouble," Kalinda says finally, "that might require an investigator."

"Um … too bad there aren't any investigators in your apartment right now," says Sophia.

"Sophia, I think I need …" There's another pause. "I need help."

Sophia is not certain she's ever heard Kalinda refer to her own _needs_ before, not even in bed. "Do you have a lawyer?"

Kalinda sighs. "In a manner of speaking," she says. "But it's a little more … complicated than that."

Sophia recognizes how closely she is listening, to whatever is behind Kalinda's voice, to any hint in the words of what's going on, what's needed. The inconvenient image of Kalinda naked, waiting on the bed for her, the signs of pleasure Sophia finally learned to see brushing across her face like breezes over still water. Sophia glances over her shoulder at Griffin, not wanting to acknowledge that she's already hooked.

"All right," she says, finally. "Tell me what I need to do."

She can hear Kalinda smiling. "Could I see you tonight?"

Griffin is folding a pair of socks together, stuffing them carefully inside his sneakers. The gesture sends a pulse through Sophia's nerves. "I can't tonight," she says.

"Oh."

"Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow's good," says Kalinda.

"That bar by your office? You _are_ still with Lockhart/Gardner, right?"

"It's Lockhart and Associates now." Sophia opens her mouth, but Kalinda interrupts before she even gets a word out. "Complicated. But yeah. And yeah."

"Say eight?"

"With the case I'm working on? Make it nine." Kalinda's voice drops about an octave. "I'm really looking forward to it."

The blood rushes to Sophia's groin. Sophia hates, hates, hates that Kalinda can still make her do that. "Yes."

"Sophia? Thanks." She's hung up before Sophia can answer.

Sophia notices her breath is so quick she's almost panting, and she drops to the couch to gather her wits. It's been months, practically a year, and she hadn't thought Kalinda still had that kind of control.

"You all right?"

Sophia hadn't even noticed Griffin come in. "Yes, I'm fine."

"What's on your mind?" He strokes her hair and then leans his lips down into hers. Sophia sighs her frustration and confusion into his mouth, imagining the tiny plum lips and the delicate tongue that teases at her thighs and her pulse point, furious that she wishes Griffin were gone already.

"Nothing," she says, and kisses him back, not thinking about tomorrow.


End file.
